Now that the glare and tumult of the Awards season has settled down, some unremarked yet totally remarkable screen gems are coming to the cinemas.
SON OF THE SOUTH is one such gem, a jewel that belongs on the same strand as JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH and UNITED STATES Vs BILLIE HOLIDAY.
Executive produced by Spike Lee and written and directed by his go to editor, Barry Alexander Brown, Oscar nominated for BLACK KLANSMAN, SON OF THE SOUTH is based on Bob Zellner’s memoir, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement.
Zellner was a preppy, privileged White college kid researching a paper about race relations when the white supremacist powers that be threaten to expel him from school.
Instilled with an innate sense of the injustice of segregation, Zellner is fired up by a meeting with Rosa Parks and volunteers to work for the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee.
This brands him as a traitor to his race by many, no less so to his grand-pappy, a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, a scary performance by the late Brian Dennehy.
He also faces some suspicion from some members of the Black community, not unduly, when you realise the nefarious infiltration that went on by White authority to scuttle any success in the progress of racial equality.
Lucas Till is terrific as Zellner, the chiselled chin All American Aryan, with his apple pie persona, a son of the south out to rectify the sins of the fathers of the south.
SON OF THE SOUTH depicts events from fifty years ago. Sadly, the attitudes and mindsets it depicts, steadfast and stubborn White Supremacy and the racial prejudice that is its progeny, which should by now have been relegated to the dustbin of history, are just as insidiously ensconced in the American south, and elsewhere.
SON OF THE SOUTH therefore remains an indictment against the stunted progress of the Civil Rights Movement, while simultaneously celebrating the determination of those who stand and demand equality.
www.SonOfTheSouthMovie.com.au
The trailer can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzigvG55ImQ